


waves

by no_net_ensnaresme



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, I have no shame, This is pure fluff, there is an abundance of metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 02:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10527387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/no_net_ensnaresme/pseuds/no_net_ensnaresme
Summary: Five times Stiles compared his love for Lydia to the rising tides.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Rachel who I made read this before I even considered posting it and then threatened me with a beat down if I didn't.

_Tides_

Stiles remembered one particular day in the eighth grade coming home only to collapse face down on his bed, nose smushed into his pillow as he tried to suffocate disappointment, heartbreak, and overwhelming, crushing sadness. His father had lightly tapped on his door before pushing it open to join him on the edge of the bed, placing one large hand on the space between Stiles’ shoulders. The room felt heavy with Stiles’ teenage angst and his father had taken a deep breath, his exhale lasting as though he had been saving oxygen in his limbs just for this particular sigh.

“Bad day, son?”

Stiles had only let himself respond in a muffled groan, images of Lydia wrapping her arms around Jackson’s neck and leaning up to kiss him deeply, her red lipstick staining his lips, seared with a hot poker of agony into the back of his mind.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but this too shall pass.”

“Attar of Nishapur. Nice reference, dad.”

Stiles moved his head to the side to glance at his dad who was staring at him bemusedly before shaking his head once and patting Stiles’ back.

“At least some of that inordinate amount of time spent on the internet is paying off.”

“The internet is all I have, dad. It is my only constant and loyal companion in these dark and lonely times.”

“I thought that was Scott’s job title?”

“You rejected my idea of adopting Scott, so he still has to spend a requisite amount of time at his own house.”

All Stiles heard in response was another long-suffering sigh. The two men let the silence linger in a companionable stillness, his father’s hand resting on Stiles’ back a comforting point of contact, mooring Stiles to the present rather than drifting back to drowning in his own self-pity.

“I’m guessing that this is Lydia Martin related misery?”

His father broke the silence, his voice soft with only the smallest amount of amusement. Stiles decided to let it slide this time, instead focusing on how many times his four walls had heard the name ‘Lydia Martin,’ thinking that perhaps if he could ask them they could tell him how many times he had whispered her name like a prayer, all the while wishing it could sound more like a curse.

“It’s always Lydia Martin related.”

“A crush like this, Stiles, it comes and goes. Think of the ocean, it ebbs and flows with the tide, right? And one day you can’t see the sand and it looks like the water never ends, but a couple days later you come back and the sand is there and the water has receded. It feels like you’re drowning right now but it’s just because the tide is high. It’ll get better.”

It was the longest string of sentences he had ever heard his father utter, which was why Stiles wasn’t surprised when he felt his father ruffle his buzzed hair once and stand from his bed, the springs creaking under the sudden loss of his weight. Stiles propped himself up on one elbow and gave his father a rueful smile and mumbled out a, “Thanks, dad.”

“Anytime, son.” His father had knocked awkwardly on Stiles’ doorframe twice before returning his son’s smile and closing the door softly behind him.

As soon as the door shut, Stiles flopped back on his back and stared at the pocks on his ceiling thinking that if a love like this was like the rising and falling of tides, then Lydia Martin must be the moon, pulling him towards her as though Stiles was the ocean, helpless to her gravitational pull.

And Stiles wondered if the moon was just as ignorant to the ocean’s existence. The moon, sitting mightily in the night sky, giving light to lost souls wandering the earth in an otherwise oppressive darkness. The moon, 238,900 miles from the earth and its ocean.

It was in that moment that it had suddenly made sense that it was the natural order of the world that Stiles Stilinski could not exist on Lydia Martin’s radar.

_Marée_

Years later, Stiles had wondered aloud again at the merciless pull of the moon against the ocean while Lydia lay her head against his chest. He had laid out one of his mother’s quilts on the soggy grass so that he and Lydia could sprawl while looking up at the stars, Stiles naming the constellations he knew while Lydia drew her own on his skin.

“You know, it’s not just that the moon’s gravitational force affects the tides,” she had said so matter of factly, sitting up and tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear while looking down at Stiles who had remained lying contently on the ground, “the moon and the earth are drawn to each other, like magnets. The moon is trying to pull the whole earth closer and everything but the ocean is tied down by earth’s own gravitational pull. The moon isn’t recklessly or negligently pulling the ocean close to her. She wants him.”

And it shouldn’t have surprised Stiles in that moment that Lydia had just used a metaphor coated in scientific explanation to soothe the ancient runes carved on his skin he thought he had so deftly hidden from her.

So instead, Stiles had propped himself up on his elbows and tilted his head to the side, looking up at a Lydia Martin dusted in moonlight, “That was really smart.”

And when Lydia had pressed her lips together in a half-hearted attempt to smother her growing smile, she didn’t look away from Stiles’ gaze. Even when she had poked him in the shoulder and leaned down towards him again. Even when she had whispered against his lips, “I read it somewhere.”

Stiles thought back to the first time that her lips had pressed to his, how she had stolen his breath like that one time he and Scott had jumped in the lake in the woods in the middle of winter. How his lungs had frozen after one intake of staggered breath, his skin prickling with shock, and how when he had surfaced he had never felt more aware of the world around him, as though all this time before this moment, he had been ambling through life with half-lidded eyes.

It was at this point that Stiles couldn’t remember whether he was recounting his polar plunge with Scott or hands flexing on a dirty locker room floor as he forced himself to resist the urge to reach up and caress the auburn hair illuminated by the sun shining through half closed blinds on an unwashed window.

Both had been baptismal.

Stiles had felt as though maybe he was being baptized once more as one of his hands moved from Lydia’s waist to her hair, letting his fingers get lost in their waves. With her tongue in his mouth and her body covering every inch of his that she could reach, Stiles was consumed by her, willingly dragged under by a high tide rising to meet her. “I love you,” he had whispered against her skin like a promise to god and the universe.

And so it was under the moon, the stars, the infinite universe and a curtain of Lydia Martin’s hair, that Stiles had realized that if he was the ocean and Lydia was the moon, no gravitational or natural force could keep him planted on this earth. His waves would rise those 238,900 miles to meet the moon. He would submerge the earth beneath his love for her.

Under the moon, the stars, the infinite universe and a curtain of her hair, they kissed until Stiles couldn’t determine where he ended and she began and Stiles thought that perhaps the best thing to have ever happened to him was letting himself be at the mercy of Lydia Martin.

_Fala_

Stiles woke up with his nose buried in Lydia’s hair and he thought that if he were to suffocate at this very moment, at least he would die happy. He wormed his way closer to her, nuzzling his nose into her neck and sliding his hand to the exposed piece of skin by her hip, tracing out his name over and over again with his index finger.

“Mmm, you’re up early. We haven’t even gotten a text from Scott that we’re late for brunch yet.”

“Don’t worry, I was planning on staying in bed until then. You know how much Scott hates change.”

Her body shifted as she turned to face him, a lazy smile stretching across her face before pursing her lips contemplatively, “I think you might be confusing your neuroses for Scott’s again.”

“Oh. No, it was purposeful.”

“Your self-awareness is one of your most attractive qualities.”

Small fingers trailed up his chest and she smirked as she she shifted until she was straddling his hips, his hands sliding contently to her ass, “We have some time to spare since we’re being so considerate of Scott and his inability to cope with even the smallest changes in his routine.”

“We really are such great friends,” he murmured against her lips, feeling her smile as her lips met his softly.

But, like most embers that meet gasoline, it grew with intensity. He rolled them and his body fit against hers like two puzzle pieces, like magnets drawn and clasped together. Her hands stroked his cheeks, moving to his hair and pulling at the tufts in the back of his head until she was swallowing his groans.

He felt her come undone like a beautiful flower unfurling its petals for the spring sunlight beneath his hands, her back arching into his chest as she pressed them closer and closer until there was no room for anything else but their two bodies melded together.

His hands gently stripped her of her shirt, tossing it haphazardly to the floor and greedily grazed every inch of her that he could reach as she pulled his mouth to hers once more. He could feel every individual goosebump raised on her naked skin and he read each like he was a blind man searching for redemption in a Bible written in braille.

It was no surprise that Lydia Martin had always been his salvation.

“Off,” She rasped out, tugging on his shirt until his hands were forced to briefly abandon their post worshipping her body and rip off the offending garment. But because he was a man dedicated to his art, he returned to his survey of her body, staring at her bare breasts like he imagined a sculptor looked at a slab of marble before unwrapping the masterpiece with only his chisel. He was no sculptor, but as he lightly caressed her nipple and watched it prickle and harden beneath his thumb, he thought perhaps he understood what it felt like to create something with his hands alone.

She lifted her legs to clasp her ankles beneath his back and pulled him closer to her, his groin meeting her center, and he could literally feel all of the remaining bit of blood sprint from his brain to his dick, “You’re going to kill me,” he groaned out as she lifted her hips to meet his rhythmically.

“Not until you’ve made me come,” she chirped, her cheeks flushed and chest heaving up and down as she raised her eyebrows in a challenge.

He smirked and gently kissed her cheek, grazing his nose from her cheek to neck before sitting up and saluting her, “Yes ma’am,” and moving down the bed until he was face to face with her underwear, her legs already open for him.

“And so we meet again.”

“Stiles, you do not need to say that every time you look at my underwear.”

Stiles flicked his eyes to hers as she propped herself on her elbows to look at him, “Listen, do I tell you how to go about solving the Riemann hypothesis?”

“Are you telling me to stay in my lane?”

“I’m telling you to trust The Process.”

“Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot,”

Stiles’ eyebrows puckered in confusion until Lydia quipped flippantly, “Thomas Moore. Irish poet from the 18th century,” while tossing her hair from her chest sticky with sweat.

“Mmm, talk dirty to me baby,”

“Did you know that if you lost all of your atomic space, your body would fit into a cube less than 1/500th of a centimeter on each side? Neutron stars have actually undergone this kind of compression and in a single cubic centimeter of neutron star material there are about 100m tons of matter.”

She watched with piercing focus as Stiles’ jaw tightened and eyes glazed over.

“Fuck,” he croaked, swallowing before wiggling his body into position and peeling her panties from her body, licking his lips in anticipation.

If Lydia’s naked body encompassed the words of the holy scripture, her vagina held all the secrets to the universe. It was pandora’s box. It was Stiles’ mecca. He made sure he made the journey at least three times a week.

And like the moon and the tide, Stiles gravitated towards her to meet her center and Lydia’s gasps were waves crashing against one another as the tide just kept rising and rising and rising until both she and Stiles were left immersed in an endless sea of each other.

_Παλίρροια_

Making the bed had somehow, somewhere down the line, become both mentally and physically tasking on Stiles.

He harkened back to when he had taken great pleasure using the limited amount of time for laser-sharp focus on the task of making his bed, taking great care to ensure the sheets were pulled taut so no wrinkles were visible, stepping back briefly to admire his work and every other day grabbing a quarter off of his desk to try to flip it off of his stark sheets.

It never worked, but it didn’t stop Stiles from trying.

Now, Stiles was met with a force greater than his attention deficit hyperactive disorder as he tried to pull the sheets so they were aligned with the mattress just so.

“Stiles, I understand most of your quirks, I really do, one might even say that I find some of them kind of adorable,”

“Because you have an IQ of 170. And you _like me_ like me.” Stiles winked as he got on his hands and knees and tucked some of the fitted sheet under the mattress.

“Yes, exactly. But I do not nor do I think I ever will, understand your obsession with making the bed every morning. And not just making the bed so our bedroom looks presentable, I’m talking about a serious obsession with making sure it looks perfect, pristine even! I mean, for god’s sake, you barely pick up your clothes from where you drop them when you get home!”

Although his hands were busy pulling the next layer of sheets over the fitted sheet, Stiles stopped briefly to squint his eyes at her standing on the other side of the mattress, “You stopped making your side of the bed.”

With one hand on her hip and nothing on but one of Stiles’ old shirts, Lydia huffed, “I think you have a problem and we should use this time instead to get to the root of it.”

“We don’t have enough time to ferret out all of my psychological problems, Lydia. We’re already late for brunch. Now adjust the sheets on your side so they’re even and there aren’t any wrinkles.”

“If you paid this much attention to wrinkles in your clothing maybe that little girl on the street wouldn’t have given you half of her sandwich because she thought you were homeless.” Lydia pursed her lips but stepped closer to the bed and pulled the sheets in tandem with Stiles as the both of them watched the sheet go pin straight against the mattress.

As Stiles and Lydia dragged the comforter up and pulled it so it lay perfectly, he protested, “I distinctly remember you telling me that my homelessness was a direct result of my, and I quote because this is still a point of contention, ‘ _poorly grown patch of hair lying haphazardly on perfectly good cheekbones_.’”

Lydia smirked and noted, “Por que no los dos?” as she caught and fluffed the pillows Stiles had tossed her for her side of the bed, finally deciding to pull on the comforter once more to rid it of any remaining wrinkles before looking up just in time to see Stiles’ jaw go slack and eyes narrow suspiciously.

“We’re not having sex on this freshly made bed. It looks perfect. We can’t desecrate it now. Not after all the work we just put into it.” Stiles looked down at the bed and then back up at Lydia who was leaning against the bed, shirt riding up just enough for her pink, satin panties to peek out. His eyes were desperate, begging her to be merciful and pleading with himself to remain strong in this desperate hour.

When he thought all hope might be lost as he watched Lydia lick her lips in preparation of what he assumed to be more sarcastic banter in some other foreign language, he remembered his saving grace, “We haven’t tried to flip the coin yet!”

Luckily, Stiles missed her eyes rolling in frustration and could only hear an exasperated groan as he turned around and searched for the quarter he always kept on their dresser.

“For the last time, the coin flip on a freshly made bed is a notion created by Hollywood. It’s cinematic magic and it is riddled with scientific inaccuracies on basic concepts of physics.”

“Lyds, I love you. So, if you could just kindly be quiet for a moment so that I could focus, please, that would be great.”

Because he had shifted all of his focus to the matter at hand, finally succeeding in the elusive quarter bounce, he barely heard Lydia’s telltale intake of breath before she rattled off one of the many secrets of science, “Our mattress is too soft, it absorbs most of the energy you give the coin when you try to bounce it off of its surface. The tightness of our sheets won’t affect the density of our mattress, it will always be too soft for the coin to have enough remaining energy to bounce in accordance with your expectations once it hits and transfers said energy to the mattress.”

All he could do was look at the quarter placed so carefully between his thumb and index finger and sigh, wondering if he wanted to know the exact moment Lydia had figured out that his biggest kryptonite was his dick’s pavlovian response to her unapologetic intellect.

“Fuck, we’re going to be so late.” He muttered as he dropped the quarter and crawled across the bed to her, shaking his head in defeat as she met him halfway and pushed him against the pillows she had just fluffed.

She gave his nose a peck of her lips and smiled down at him, letting him brush some of her hair from his eyes so he could look at her with no obstructions. He kept one hand resting on her cheek, thumb brushing her dimple absentmindedly while she looked down at him, her eyes soft and his unwavering, “Don’t change, Stilinski.”

“I knew you liked me liked me.”

“Only on days that end in ‘y’.”

When Stiles tugged on Lydia, poking her in that little spot by her ribs that had taken him four entire months to find as her one and only ticklish spot, until she collapsed in a fit of laughter on top of him, he found himself musing whether the moon would let the ocean drag it down to it if it could. And with her head resting on his chest, a smile pressed against his shirt, and her cold toes wiggling under his legs, he realized he really didn’t care all that much because Lydia had let him drag her down to him.

Nothing much else mattered after that.

_Fjöru_

“Tobey Maguire.”

“Pleasantville.”

“Jeff Daniels.”

“RV.”

Lydia smirked while she pulled down the visor and put on her lipstick, watching Stiles dart his eyes from the road to her and narrow them in suspicion, noting the brief glance towards her pouted lips before he returned his attention to the traffic in front of him, huffing, “I knew you changed the channel to ‘RV’ from ‘Murder she Baked’ when you thought I fell asleep.”

“Maybe you actually fell asleep, missed the end, and RV was the next feature presentation.”

“You and I both know that Hallmark would never play a movie that did not have Candace Cameron Bure or Lori Loughlin in it.”

Flipping the visor up once more and turning to look out the window so that he wouldn’t be able to see her lips flip up in a small smile, Lydia merely hummed in ambiguous acknowledgment, neither conceding nor arguing.

“All this time of teasing me about my taste in TV and here you are spending the late hours of the night actively seeking out a Disney movie from 2006 with one of its feature scenes as Robin Williams being doused in actual shit.”

All he got in response was a brief raise of her eyebrows as she unbuckled her seatbelt and he pulled the car into their usual parking space.

Hopping out and meeting Lydia in front of the car, tangling his fingers with hers, he pondered aloud, “Do you just wait until I fall asleep for those two hours each night to do weird shit so you can be perfect during the day?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She winked and pulled him towards the open table where Scott was just beginning to sit down, smiling and laughing with the waitress.

“You’re just encouraging my insomnia now.” Stiles whined as he pulled out Lydia’s chair and plopped himself down in his own.

“Do you really need encouragement at this point?” Scott pointed out as he leaned forward to fist bump Stiles, which turned into a hug over the center of the table.

As Stiles fell back into his seat, he narrowed his eyes, pulling his lips taut in irritation before dismissing Scott with a pointed finger, “You don’t get to talk. You were late.”

“Stiles, you got here at the same time I did.”

“Yes, exactly. You were late.”

Lydia’s hand reached over and patted Stiles’ knee affectionately as her other hand flipped through the menu in front of her absentmindedly, “Stiles is just being neurotic, he’ll get over it as soon as Amy brings out his pancakes.”

“I can’t believe- I am not- The nerve- I- Lydia voluntarily sought out and watched RV two nights ago.” Stiles sputtered out, darting his hand out accusatorily, looking to Scott who had raised his eyebrows in surprise, cocking his head to the side in contemplation before asking, “The movie where Robin Williams has to empty his RV’s septic tank and everything kind of-”

“Goes to shit?”

“Nice one.”

“If I have to hear one more ‘shit’ pun I’m going to make sure the both of you won’t be able to do just that for a solid week.” Lydia glanced back up from her menu. Across the table Scott’s eyes had widened, Lydia noting the small smile twisting his lips at the corner before he turned his head to grin broadly at Amy approaching their table again with their drinks and breakfast.

When Lydia turned to look at Stiles though, he had his head tilted to the side, eyes soft and staring at her unabashedly with a smile teasing the corners of his lips and Lydia had to stop herself from folding her lips in on one another to curb her own smile from creeping up on her face, “That was really hot, babe.” Stiles crooned softly as he reached over, stole a piece of bacon off her plate and popped it in his mouth, finally letting his lips turn up in a full-fledged, bacon-filled, smile.

“I’ll be doing more than watching kitchy movies at 2am if you take another piece of my bacon, darling.”

“So you admit that you watched RV! And without me!” Stiles gasped around a mouthful of pancakes, waving his fork around her pointedly.

Scott’s eyes darted between Lydia delicately cutting up her omelet, and placing a bite in her mouth as she looked over to Stiles with a smirk gracing her mouth, and Stiles who met Lydia’s stare without hesitation, angrily chewing the pancakes in his mouth, “She also thinks you’re darling.”

Both Lydia and Stiles broke their impromptu staring contest to look at Scott who was now sipping his own milk contentedly, “Always finding the silver lining, buddy.” Stiles nodded appreciatively, smiling at him before turning towards Lydia again and smirking at her pursed lips and narrowed eyes.

“And Freud strikes again.” Stiles moved his eyebrows up and down as he smiled broadly at Lydia’s narrowed eyes, happily plucking up another forkful of pancakes and stuffing them in his mouth.

“Freud is a fraud. In virtually every case he analyzed as a part of ‘The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,’ Freud’s explanations of ‘slips’ are arbitrary, constrained, or unnecessary.”

Stiles choked on his pancakes.

His chin jut forward, eyes wide with terror, and face turning red as he continued to cough and Scott leaned forward to pat his back in concern, until eventually Stiles had enough oxygen to wheeze out, “Lydia, we’re in public, for the love of god.”

Leaning over and stabbing a piece of one of his pancakes on her fork, Lydia smiled and shrugged, “Did it anyway.”

When it seemed like Stiles was going to survive the massive amount of pancakes he had inadvertently inhaled down his windpipe, Scott sat back down in his chair and snorted, “I guess it was too much to hope that we’d go a whole Sunday Brunch without Stiles almost asphyxiating himself on his pancakes.”

Lydia hemmed and raised her fork to point at Scott in mock seriousness, “Yes, you really need to learn how to be realistically optimistic.”

“I’m working on it.”

With a pout of her lips and a look of faux contemplation delicately placed on her face, Lydia placed her fork down on her napkin and crossed her arms, “You know what else you should work on?”

Stiles looked down as he felt Lydia’s foot graze his calf and grinned, realizing exactly where this conversation was headed and feeling no need to try to stop it. Scott had been late for brunch. There had to be consequences.

It appeared that Scott also had a sense of where Lydia was guiding the conversation topic and groaned, dropping his head to the table and mumbling, “Was I being too optimistic in hoping you wouldn’t bring this up again?”

“Yes, yes you were.” Stiles nodded as he placed his hands on the table and began to rise from the table, looking for the easiest route to the bathroom without having to attempt to weave through occupied tables.

Scott’s eyes widened as he follows Stiles’ movements with a growing panic, “Dude. What are you doing? You’re leaving _now_ to pee?”

“Yes, my bladder insists that now is the time and I am not one to deny my body of its most basic functions,” Stiles glanced at Lydia who had crossed her legs and had the smallest smirk gracing her lips as she stared at Scott whose wide eyes hadn’t left Stiles yet, “I’m sure she’ll be merciful, right Lyds?”

“Sure.”

Stiles shrugged and began to back away from the table with a grin growing, “Good enough for me.”

Walking back towards his table, Stiles knew that the feeling of finally relieving his bladder could only rivaled by watching Lydia and Scott lean in towards one another, smiles clearly stretched across their faces as Scott drummed on the table in front of Lydia in excitement and she patted his hands affectionately, tilting her head to the side and saying something that made Scott throw his head back in laughter.

Unfortunately, due to these observations, Stiles missed the fact that there was a glass door he was supposed to push through to get back outside to their table, his nose and forehead ramming into the glass as he abruptly jolted in shock. He backed up two steps from the door and glared at the offensive object while he rubbed his face, waiting a few more seconds before trying the whole endeavor again, this time using his hands to push through the door instead of his face.

Lydia and Scott had, of course, seen the whole thing and looked over at him at the same time. Lydia had pressed her lips together, her dimples sinking into her cheeks and eyes alight with amusement and Scott’s face had broken into an immense smile that spanned across his face as his body began to shake with laughter.

And Stiles felt as though he was captured in the midst of a colossal wave, his chest tightening as he let himself be consumed, drowning, suffocating, asphyxiating in an all-encompassing, ubiquitous, but quiet happiness.

As he sat back down, Scott’s eyes wet with pooled up tears of laughter staring at him across the table, Stiles thought how apt it was that while Lydia was the moon, Scott was the sun.

Stiles thought back to his father sitting on his bed and comparing love to the rise and fall of the tides.

He thought back to sitting at his desk late that night, losing himself to site after site explaining the complexities behind rising tides. He remembered learning how the rise and fall of sea levels were actually caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun.

So, when Lydia placed her hand on his thigh and Scott reached over and put his hand on his shoulder, Stiles wasn’t surprised or shocked or taken aback when he somehow felt both anchored and unmoored all at once.

_Fin_


End file.
